


left my heart in hawija (and it followed me in pieces)

by stagnation



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6416908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stagnation/pseuds/stagnation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His kids always feel like anomalies. Like his negative didn't overrun the positive. They both have his laugh and his teeth but they don't keep theirs sharp, they don't have them gnashed or know what copper tastes like between then. They're this balance, like they got the best parts of both their parents. Like they were these sponges that just soaked up the goodness in him and didn't let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	left my heart in hawija (and it followed me in pieces)

**Author's Note:**

> Introspection? I don't know, I was sad.

The doc says 'girl' and Frank packs it in until that night, his ear against her stomach and his arm around her middle.

"The hell am I gonna do with a daughter?" he asks her miserably, face wet; sounds lost.

"The same thing you'd do with a son, stupid," Maria tells him, fingertips itching into his scalp. "Just love her."

So he does. 

He loves Lisa (Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, like a bell he doesn't get tired of ringing), with more of his heart than he thought he even had left. When he leaves, he kisses her picture goodnight before he drifts off with his rifle between his legs, thinks about her impossibly small limbs tucked over his own, how he can feel that rabbit fast thump in her chest when she's pressed all up against him. Kinda love was different, unconditional; he'd never wanted to impress anyone more, not even Maria. Never felt such a strong, desperate need to protect something that precious, that vulnerable. 

This is, he thinks, what it is to be a parent. Ripping your heart out of your chest and holding it palms up, like a gospel, extended like it were a sacrificial offering. 'Here,' he'd say, 'it's all yours,' and he tells himself he wouldn't even mind the fallout, it'd be worth it to see her grow, mold into a better person than him.

Loving a son, as it turns out, is a lot like loving a daughter after all, maybe even trickier. Kid's got his name and none of his malice; it's good, it's the way he dreamed it. (Sometimes, later, only sometimes, he's not convinced that's all it was - a dream - usually about when he can't stop seeing his arms elbow deep in tanager red.) But Frank Jr. starts off avoiding his mistakes, becomes so different so quickly but so similar in so many ways. By the time he's five, Junior's got a Groucho Marx impression up his sleeve, better than his father could ever. Frank nearly busts a side laughing the first time the kid does it with a drawn-on marker 'stache. He doesn't remember ever laughing that hard, even if the old feeling clenches sometimes, like a fist squeezing his guts.

His kids always feel like anomalies. Like his negative didn't overrun the positive. Junior makes these plays out of his toys, complex shit with kidnappings and rescues, stuff that ought to win awards. Lisa dances, ballet and jazz, but she can rattle off every dinosaur on the list, scientific names and heights and all. They both have his laugh and his teeth but they don’t keep theirs sharp, they don’t have them gnashed or know what copper tastes like between then. They're this balance, like they got the best parts of both their parents. Like they were these sponges that just soaked up the goodness in him and didn't let go. 

He marvels about it sometimes, he marvels. They're so good. They're so good for him. Even when he's tired, later, even when he can't quite get his puzzle piece to fit back in (it gets scraped on the edges, bent out of shape, part of it still lodged somewhere in Kirkuk), they're still so good. They're too good. He feels wrong, like he's not meant for this life anymore. It's a fleeting wish, one that eats at him after, gnaws at his gristle.

"Read to you tomorrow, sweetie," he says then, he swears, and she cries like the first time she skins her knee and he still can't, he can't attach himself like this, he thinks, he's too tired, bones too sharp for this place, looks too hard. Junior doesn’t mean to edge out of his way when he walks the house; it's just prey instinct. Keep away from what's dangerous. Maria smiles at him still but it doesn't quite reach her eyes like it used to, and he hates the pity.

Trying his best seems a better fate than having to explain himself. Forcing the issue seems preferable to actually dealing with it. He can't put the feeling into any amount of words that will make them understand, that'll take the pity out of the equation, so he doesn't. Read to you tomorrow, baby, read to you tomorrow. Love you tomorrow. There's a point where he has to wonder if that's all life is; a long string of broken promises.

"They need to know you're okay," Maria tells him.

'I'm not,' he doesn't say.

"They need to know they don't have to be afraid of you."

'They should be,' he doesn't say.

"Or maybe it's me," she wonders, and that hurts too. "Maybe I'm the one that has to hear it."

He doesn't know, when he wraps harsh fingers around her wrist and tugs her hand out of his briefs, when her eyes water up like shrink wrap and he doesn't know how he's ever going to adjust to this again. Tomorrow, he tells her, we'll go out tomorrow, we'll try tomorrow. We’ll go to the park tomorrow.

"Just tell me something true, Frank," she whispers against his back, her hands splayed against his shoulder blades (carved into angles, where an archangel's wings were, before).

"Tomorrow," he tells her back, his voice soft like he didn't know he could. This isn't forever, he thinks, if he can already start to see himself through his cracks. This can't be forever. His fingers lace in hers; he tells her again, "I'll still love you tomorrow." He still doesn't know if it did her any favors.

Kiss me, the morning light tells him. When he rolls over to greet her, she’s nothing but heart monitors and an intravenal drip. 

'Confused', he'd call the feeling. 'Twice the normal load of benzos and six separate orderlies,' the hospital would sum up the aftermath, a tidy and inventoried list of the consequences of his emotions. 

For three days he doesn't do anything but wash his hands, scrubs them raw in whatever sink he can find. His skin peels, his hands welt. His fingers feel raw and it hurts to touch anything that belongs to this world, for a while. He keeps finding blood under his nails anyway. So he moves forward.

'No loaded guns in the house,' was always the rule, 'not where the kids could find them.' He agrees, still, and knows that the feral creature wearing his hands and his face isn't something that can live in Frank Castle's home, wear Frank Castle's clothes, continue to masquerade under the impression that he is still Frank Castle, like he's okay or even alive. What he needs, what this city needs, isn't a hand to hold or a body to keep it warm. It needs a knife, serrated, something to cut out the infection and leave the rest.

Told himself to love the fallout, sure. Didn't realize that was all he'd be left with. This house was infested, poisonous, sunk slow into your system like carbon monoxide. Nobody to grow, nothing to mold but himself, this hard, worn wood carving, etched out with fire and chisels. No guns in the house, is the rule, and so Frank removes the only weapon left in the equation. He leaves and, to his credit, only looks back once.

At the end of the day, that's all it takes.


End file.
